The Cambridge Companion to Chopin

Twelve essays by leading Chopin scholars provide a uniquely comprehensive guide to the composer and his music.

Jim Samson (Edited by)

9780521477529, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 8 December 1994

356 pages, 120 music examples
24.8 x 16.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.57 kg

'… highly recommended to anybody seeking an easily digestible yet informative overview of Chopin the man, his music, and his public.' Susan Bradshaw, The Musical Times

The Cambridge Companion to Chopin provides the enquiring music-lover with helpful insights into a musical style which recognises no contradiction between the accessible and the sophisticated, the popular and the significant. Twelve essays by leading Chopin scholars make up three parts. Part 1 discusses the sources of Chopin's style in the music of his predecessors and the social history of the period. Part 2 profiles the mature music, and Part 3 considers the afterlife of the music - its reception, its criticism and its compositional influence in the works of subsequent composers.

Chronology
Myth and reality: a biographical introduction
Part I. The Growth of a Style: 1. Piano music and the public concert, 1800–1850 Janet Ritterman
2. The nocturne: development of a new style David Rowland
3. The twenty-seven etudes and their antecedents Simon Finlow
4. Tonal architecture in the early music John Rink
Part II. Profiles of the Music: 5. Extended forms: the ballades, scherzos and fantasies Jim Samson
6. Small 'forms': in defence of the prelude Jeffrey Kallberg
7. Beyond the dance Adrian Thomas
8. The sonatas Anatole Leikin
Part III. Reception: 9. Chopin in performance James Methuen-Campbell
10. Chopin reception in nineteenth-century Poland Zofia Chechlinska
11. Victorian attitudes to Chopin Derek Carew
12. Chopin's influence on the fin de siècle and beyond Roy Howat
Appendix: a historical survey of Chopin on disc James Methuen-Campbell
Notes
List of Chopin's works
Bibliographical note
Index.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH]